Harar Buffet

Here is a "palate cleanser" for those of you that are weary of my Canada posts!

A few Fridays ago, we went to Harar Ethiopian Restaurant on El Cajon Blvd (check out my previous posts here and if you click on that, there's another older post within that!). This is located right near the Texas St. intersection and also across the street from Denny's. Looks like they got a new sign!

On Fridays, Harar offers an all you can eat buffet. When I first heard about this, the buffet was $9.00. That was a few years ago. I guess it got really popular or something or maybe it's because of the economy, but now the price is $13, which still isn't too bad considering you'd pay way more than that if you ordered all the stuff they offered individually.

I didn't get pix of everything offered in the buffet (too many people in the front room; we sat in the back patio). There were three meat dishes. The circular dish held the Chicken (Yedero wot) while the rectangular dish on top had lamb (Yebeg siga wot); below that was beef.(Yebbo siga). All of the meat dishes were in a red spicy sauce; the beef was my favorite. The chicken was also especially good, like falling from the bone good.

The other dishes were all vegetarian which included red lentils, split yellow lentils, cabbage with carrots and potatoes, an awesome eggplant dish, and collard greens. There was also a huge basket with rolled up pieces of injera  for the taking...

Here is the back patio where we sat. If you clicked on my older posts, you only saw the front room, so now here's the back! There was a mixed crowd that day. There was an older couple next to us wearing what looked like woven rugs with holes cut out for the head to go through. Interesting fashion choice. I'm not sure if it was a cultural outfit or not.  There were also some couples as well as groups of college type students there. Mixed too - Asian, Caucasian, Latino. There were also Ethiopians sitting in the front room. Points for authenticity not like Muzita in University Heights with all the hipster yuppies.

Bert's beer, the Meta which he didn't really like. He said it was too light and didn't have much flavor.

The plates were paper and but the cutlery was real. This was one of our plates...I made the mistake of getting a tiny bit of all the lentils when I really should have been saving room for this (that plate not shown)! The beef and the eggplant dishes! That eggplant must have been magical because even Bert ate it and he normally HATES eggplant.  If you ever go during their buffet night, get the eggplant and also the carrots and cabbage dish. The carrots were so delicious, bordering on savory sweet. TC really enjoyed the carrots and the eggplants

As is customary with Ethiopian cuisine, we ate with our hands (which was also a plus for TC). Even though utensils were offered next to the injera basket, we chose to do it the right way. I'm glad we finally got to try their buffet (no sambussas offered though). It's well worth it especially if you like the meat dishes. If you are a vegetarian, you might also enjoy their buffet since there's about 6 or 7 things to choose from.